‘New Jersey’s Anti-Masonic Party’

    

From the Proceedings of the Fourth Massachusetts Convention of Antimasonic Republicans, Boston, September 1833.
Click to enlarge.

We’ve had better days at New Jersey Lodge of Masonic Research and Education. I can’t write off yesterday’s meeting as a total loss—I mean, we held our nominations for elected office for the coming two-year term to make our December communication easier—but things could have been more encouraging.

First, attendance was slight. We don’t draw huge crowds to our activities (no research lodge does), but we typically are good for twenty guys, approximately. There were eight of us in lodge assembled at Freemasons Hall Saturday. Secondly, due to an absence, there was only a single presenter for the morning. A good speaker could carry a meeting, but that wasn’t to be. Worse, our speaker began by confessing he hadn’t completed his research, so that his presentation wouldn’t delve inside his main topic, but that instead, his introductory topic, for giving context to the keynote, would have to suffice.

Okay, that unprepared sorry speaker was myself. I didn’t budget enough time to tackle all the research I needed for this paper. The topic is the Anti-Masonic Party in New Jersey. That introductory topic was the abduction and possible killing of William Morgan in Upstate New York, the event that precipitated the anti-Masonic movement in many states between 1827 and 1840. Yesterday was the 200th anniversary of the kidnapping, which is why I aimed for this meeting to present a history of this local political party, but time ran out.

In my professional editorial work, deadlines are no problem. Of course there’s remuneration at the end of those jobs, so maybe that’s why, but what frustrates me about this research project is I know where to find the troves of information I require, but making time to go has been difficult. For example, the New Jersey State Library, located in Trenton, keeps banker’s hours; it’s open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., like a church thrift shop or something.

So, I focused on William Morgan’s life and alleged demise, relying on sources from Canada, which seem to me to be objective and rational. Much has been written about the “Morgan Affair,”  but I find a lot gets emotional and defensive. I wish I had Dafoe’s book. I never got around to buying Morgan: The Scandal that Shook Freemasonry, and now it’s out of print and copies are expensive. And, Masonic libraries are stingy with hours too.

Anyway, it’s an interesting story because simultaneously the anti-Masonic political party never accomplished anything in the state, but Freemasonry in New Jersey almost disappeared nevertheless. By 1840, when the smoke mostly had dissipated, there were eight lodges still operational, down from more than fifty in ’27. The fraternity had returned to its size at the founding of Grand Lodge in 1786. Long before 1840, the party, in the words of one historian, had “dwindled into insignificance” itself.

From The Antimasonic Party by Charles McCarthy, 1903 (the author’s doctoral dissertation). Click to enlarge.

In the 1832 presidential contest between Tennessee Past Grand Master Andrew Jackson and Kentucky Past Grand Master Henry Clay, the New Jersey Anti-Masonic Party inadvertently delivered their state to Jackson by denying Clay just enough votes in the tightest election in Jersey history. Clay had demitted from his lodge in 1824—never denounced the Craft, but gave up his membership—so the antimasons helped send a prominent and enthusiastic Freemason to the White House. They were that kind of political voice.

My desired conclusion for the talk was to be a humorous note about corruption in government courtesy of this one-issue party, but I need to grab more details first. I mean it’s funny in a dark way. If you know New Jersey politics, you know things never change when it comes to our beloved grifters in government, no matter the political party. (I used to work in professional politics. The official I answered to ended up in a federal penitentiary. They’re all garbage.)

I’ll get my eyes on the obscure papers I need eventually.

From Anti-Masonic Review, a monthly magazine by ‘renouncing Mason’ Henry Dana Ward, 1828. Click to enlarge.

After such a confused performance, I wanted to just quietly resume my seat and tell myself no one will remember this ignominious episode by the next time we meet. So what does Worshipful Master Don do? Has me exit the room. In my absence, the brethren—all seven of ’em!—voted to confer the lodge’s Distinguished Laureate Meritus honor on me. I didn’t even know meritus was a word.

We have too many honors at LORE. If you present five papers, we may elect you to Laureate Membership. Present ten, and maybe you’ll become a Distinguished Laureate. Do the ten and serve the lodge in other ways, and you could become this DLM. When the lodge was launched twenty-five years ago, just one honor was created: the one for ten papers. That’s enough. Ten papers, approved by the Editorial and Review Committee, is a ton of work. Could take a decade or more. Two members have preceded me here: Ben Hoff and Howard Kanowitz, both of whom have dazzled and entertained the lodge with their historical findings and engaging styles. (Don’t tell no one, but I’ve never written a Masonic research paper! I write in magazine feature article style. Same information, just in a different package.) But my thanks to the brethren for choosing me for this distinction. I rang the bell on that ten-paper minimum long ago, but never inquired into the honors because… we have too many honors in Masonry and it has to stop. It gets more ridiculous as the fraternity shrinks like a rayon shirt in the wash.

Our next meeting will be Saturday, December 12 for our elections & installation of officers and the new Master’s inaugural paper.

     

‘Did you know about Kentucky Long Rifle Lodge?’

    

You might not believe it, but the storied Kentucky rifle figures not only tangentially in Masonic history, but also directly. But first, the current events: William O. Ware Lodge of Research in Kentucky is conducting a raffle of such a firearm. From the publicity:

Raffle Tickets Cost Only $50 Each

No limit on quantity of purchases

This year’s annual raffle item is a Kentucky Long Rifle. The stock of this .45 caliber rifle is an attractive hard maple with curly grain that extends to muzzle with brass cap and fitted four-inch heavy brass butt plate. A hickory ramrod mount through two beaded pipes and matching thimble. Bore is bright and shiny. Triggers and locks operable.

The raffle drawing will be held November 6 at 7:30 p.m. at Walt’s Hitching Post, 3300 Madison Pike in Ft. Wright during the William O. Ware Annual Festive Board.

One hundred percent of all proceeds support Masonic research at the William O. Ware Lodge of Research. Please note, purchasing a raffle ticket does not include a ticket to the Festive Board. Separate invitations will be sent for this event later in the year.

William O. Ware’s Kentucky Charitable Gaming License No. EXE0002699.

The Masonic Society hosted its 2017 conference in Lexington, where a similar raffle was conducted. I didn’t buy a ticket, not imaging how I possibly could get the beast home, but there were two winners. Two, because Tom Jackson forgot to bring his raffle tickets to the dinner and consequently a second ticket had to be drawn. I can’t remember who won. (Hell, I’m just realizing now that I never wrote about that conference here on The Magpie Mason! How did I neglect that? I swear I have the attention span of a puppy.)

Anyway, in a look at American history, we see Kentucky rifles were credited with major military victories. First, troops under the command of future Tennessee Grand Master Andrew Jackson were armed with these when they defeated the British at New Orleans in 1814. That battle was relived in song whence comes the rifle’s nickname. Excerpted:

But Jackson, he was wide awake,

And was not scared of trifles;

For well he knew what aim we take

With our Kentucky rifles;

He led us down to Cypress swamp,

The ground was low and mucky;

There stood John Bull in pomp,

And here was old Kentucky.

Then, the same model rifle was instrumental in winning independence for Texas where Freemasons were key in the fight against Mexico.

Later in U.S. history, during the First World War, Kentucky Grand Master J.N. Saunders granted dispensation to Kentucky Rifle Lodge, the second of that Grand Lodge’s army lodges. He opened this lodge September 25, 1917 and installed its officers at Camp Stanley. If I understand correctly, this lodge was at labor only for that year.

So buy a raffle ticket! Just don’t ask me how you’ll get that bazooka home.

     

‘Food for thought in Tennessee’

     

Magpie file photo.

This portrait of General Andrew Jackson by Charles Wilson Peale hangs in the office of the Grand Master of Pennsylvania in the Masonic Temple in Philadelphia. I don’t think art historians, or anyone else, are aware of its existence. I shot this photo in October 2007.


I typically avoid matters of Masonic politics and recognition on The Magpie Mason—I doubt my own powers of persuasion, and I don’t find these foibles all that interesting—but as today is the (249th) birthday of Andrew Jackson, there is something I cannot resist pointing out.

If you do not follow anything on Freemasonry in social media, you may not be aware of the public relations disaster being foisted upon the entire Masonic fraternity in the United States by two grand lodges down south: Georgia and Tennessee. Both recently have banned gay men from Masonic membership. As usual the most comprehensive and level-headed coverage can be found on the Dummies blog. Not only is the matter examined here and there in Masonic cyberspace, but more recently NPR and other mass media outlets have reported on it.

Tennessee has taken the additional step of proscribing Masonic membership for those who cohabitate without the benefit of marriage.

Enter Andrew Jackson, Grand Master of Masons in Tennessee, 1822-24.

In a tragedy of errors when Jackson was in his early twenties, he married Rachel Robards, the daughter of Jackson’s landlord who happened to have been married already to one Lewis Robards. She erroneously believed that first marriage, a very unhappy union, had been terminated, and that she was free to marry again. This was not the case, and her wedding to Jackson legally was viewed as bigamy and adultery. The Robards’ marriage eventually was ended in divorce in 1793 on the grounds of Rachel’s adultery. She and Jackson wed for the second time, and for keeps, several months later.

This would haunt Jackson through life, although it evidently did not affect his rise through the ranks of Tennessee Freemasonry. Actually, the record of his initiation is unknown today, but we know he served as Grand Master in the early 1820s. In 1806, he killed a man in a duel who had impugned his wife’s reputation. In his campaigns for the presidency, his opponents and enemies savagely exploited the illegal adulterous first marriage for political advantage. It worked in 1824, when Jackson lost to anti-Mason fanatic John Quincy Adams when the election was settled in the House of Representatives. As for Rachel, she would not see the White House. She died December 22, 1828 after Jackson’s election to the presidency, but before his inauguration in March 1829.

Her death did not satiate the puritans, and the Jackson administration would fall apart from another matrimonial scandal when Secretary of War John Eaton’s marriage to Margaret “Peggy” O’Neill was scrutinized. Eaton, a widower at 28, was a U.S. Senator from Tennessee and a Mason in Cumberland Lodge No. 8; Peggy was married to a Navy man named Timberlake who died overseas in 1828. It was thought Eaton arranged to have Timberlake deployed overseas so he could keep time with the wife during his absence. It also was thought the widow failed to observe a traditional period of mourning her husband’s demise before marrying again. The 1820s version of real life real housewives of Washington, DC conspired to shun the Eatons, keeping the couple from having any social life within the city of power, a very potent peer pressure indeed. The animus affected President Jackson’s cabinet to the extreme point where nearly all the cabinet members would resign only two years into the administration. It also ended Vice President John C. Calhoun’s presidential aspirations, as it was his wife who organized the ostracizing of the Eatons.

Political satire during the anti-Masonic hysteria in the early 1800s included illustrations such as this one depicting President Andrew Jackson, on the right, with members of his cabinet who also were Freemasons. This drawing appears in Light on Masonry, the massive compendium of Masonic ritual exposures, edited by Arturo de Hoyos, and published by the Scottish Rite Research Society in 2008.

There is resistance among Tennessee Freemasons to what has been done, but there also is support. The Grand Lodge will convene next week for its regular elections and balloting on legislation, so we’ll soon learn how this question will be settled. Follow the Dummies blog for that news.